View All Critic Reviews (11) Audience Reviews for Quadrophenia Mods vs. Rockers, Battlefield: England, 1960s. Disenchantment with adulthood and responsability hits harder than fists or kicks in the head for a real Mod like Jimmy. A reckless youngman infatuated with the pleasures of his generation, vespas, italian suits, drugs and rock paraphernalia. Deep in my mind I envy him. He had his winning share, at a back alley, a climax, a perfect moment to live for. Hence destruction was unavoidable, there was no turning back, he had to kiss life goodbye with dignity, the kind of dignity winners never get to feel. Pierluigi Puccini Super Reviewer A Classic Brit film with a cast full of Actors who went on to be well known names, whether that be in Soaps, Sit-coms, films or the Music business. A film that captures an era of music and rival gangs of that time. The ending of the film, I'm sure adds to the already controversial edge to this film for it's time.

Lady D'arbanville Super Reviewer As the 1970s wore on The Who increasingly turned their attention from music to filmmaking. Following Ken Russell's Oscar-nominated adaptation of Tommy, the band gained a stake in Shepperton Studios. Here they filmed the final scene of The Kids Are Alright, in what turned out to be Keith Moon's last live performance. After production wrapped on The Kids Are Alright, the group pressed on with adapting their other rock opera, Quadrophenia. In bringing Quadrophenia to the big screen, the band and first-time director Franc Roddam took a completely different approach than they had for Tommy. Ken Russell had a deep-seated interest in opera and classical music: he treated the material as an opera which just happened to have been written by a rock band. The finished product was a divisive mixed bag: amidst some striking imagery and memorable characterisation, there was a lot of bad singing, over-indulgence and naff pomposity. Quadrophenia is more like a coming-of-age film which documents the rise and fall of the original mods.

Its storyline interweaves elements of the rock opera out of album order, and its soundtrack balances The Who with other mod favourites like The Kinks, The Ronettes and The Crystals. The film is around 40 minutes longer than the album even with several songs cut out, taking its time to set up the mods' aims, culture and modus operandi. To understand the reasons for this approach, we have to consider the changing circumstances of the band. When Tommy was made, The Who were at the height of their power as a live group; they had both the money and the fame to be a little over-exuberant. Four years later, punk had moved in and swallowed up the younger generation, leaving The Who in a no-man's-land between circus-act obsolescence and risky reinvention. After the death of Keith Moon, the band lost some of its live firepower, so that even if they had wanted to recapture the old ground, they could no longer drown out their rivals. Much of Quadrophenia is about The Who trying to justify their continued existence by examining the foundations of the culture which launched them.

Just as The Who were (retrospectively) described as the original punk rock band, so there is an attempt to portray the mods as the direct predecessors of the punks. There is some similarity in their characterisation, as gangs of young people with a unique dress sense, who eschew all authority and are generally unpleasant to anyone outside their inner circle. Roddam even screen-tested Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten for the lead role, but he was dropped because no-one would insure him. Despite this earnest desire to justify themselves, the approach of The Who's surviving members is decidedly hands-off. Unlike Tommy, the band do not appear in person, either as themselves or in character (for instance, Keith Moon playing Uncle Ernie with a worrying amount of relish). We are therefore spared the prospect of Pete Townshend et al playing themselves aged 21, in the manner of Mariah Carey's excremental Glitter. There are only two occasions in which we see the band: once on a poster of Pete Townshend next to Jimmy's bed, the other in an early TV performance from Ready, Steady, Go!.

This strange sense of modesty is further reflected in the soundtrack, which was overseen by bassist John Entwistle. In Quadrophenia the songs are mixed right down to serve as background, rather than being the driving force for the action. When 'My Generation' gets played at the house party, you quickly get the mods shouting over it until Roger Daltrey's delivery becomes totally lost. The film is emphasising the effect which this music had rather than the band that created it; we have to focus on Jimmy as a character rather than as a vessel for different aspects of the group. Although this approach may disgruntle purists, the music in Quadrophenia is still of a high quality. Of the seventeen album tracks, ten survive in either their original form or with very slight alterations - for instance, the new bass part and more definitive ending of 'The Real Me', which plays out over the opening credits. The three original compositions which Townshend penned are also up to snuff: they may be more deliberately incidental, but they still feel like Who songs, and the oft-maligned Kenney Jones manages to at least partially replicate Keith Moon's drumming style.

Quadrophenia is a character study of a confused young man, who attaches himself to the mods as a means of identity, but starts to go to pieces when they desert him. Early on in the film he meets his childhood friend Kevin (a young Ray Winstone), who has just returned from a spell in the army. Jimmy has a warm bond with Kevin, but whenever his friends turn up he changes his tune and runs with the pack - right down to him fleeing the scene when Kevin is beaten up for being a rocker. The central idea of Quadrophenia is that of youth-led revolution. The mods were the first genuinely post-war teenagers; having no real attachment to the world or values of their parents, they saw no reason to accept the old way of life. The scenes of the Brighton riots are edgy and visceral, showing the gang mentality of both mods and rockers, and the cluelessness of the police who simply don't know how to respond t to a generation that doesn't care. When the magistrate orders him to pay a fine, the Ace Face (played unconvincingly by Sting) responds by getting out his chequebook, causing the whole court to erupt with laughter.

But rather than simply glorify the mods, Quadrophenia highlights the dangers of identifying with such a culture too closely. Just as The Who only became truly successful after the mods died away, so Jimmy only gets to see 'the real me' when the scales have fallen from his eyes. Having been thrown out of home, jilted by Lesley Ash and his prized scooter wrecked by a lorry, he decides to return to Brighton. After a drug-fuelled train journey ("out of my brain on the 5:15"), he finds the mods gone and the Ace Face working as a bell boy at the hotel they smashed up. Alienated and depressed, Jimmy throws Ace's scooter off Beachy Head. The scooter, like the mods, is smashed beyond repair, while the fate of Jimmy remains unknown. There are a number of flaws with Quadrophenia. Despite the impressive choreography during the riots, Franc Roddam's direction is not great - the choice of camera angles is rather jobbing and the sequence on the cliffs could have used a couple of big edits.

The first hour feels padded out, taking too long to get to Brighton and dragging narratively: there are only so many parties, bars and cafes we need to visit to understand how mod culture works. One scene in particular, of Jimmy and his friends raiding a pharmacy, wanders rather too close to Animal House in its jokes about pills and condoms. Like so many cult films, Quadrophenia is rough around the edges and approaches its subject matter in a manner which is not entirely successful. But as an examination of mod culture it manages to be comprehensive and genuine without totally falling in love with its subject, and it manages to do justice to the album, albeit in a roundabout way. Though Russell is by far the better director, this work had dated much better than Tommy, and it remains a highly influential work of 1970s cinema. Daniel Mumby BBC - Culture - Mods v Rockers: Two tribes go to war Pop music Mods v Rockers: Two tribes go to war It is 50 years since the famous showdown between Mods and Rockers in Britain’s seaside towns. Jon Savage looks back at the changing face of youth subcultures.

By Jon Savage 21 October 2014 Fifty years ago this month, on the Whitsun weekend of the 16-18 May 1964, the youth of Britain went mad. If you believed the newspapers, that is, who went with screaming headlines like ‘Battle of Brighton’, and ‘Wild Ones 'Beat Up' Margate’ . Editorials fulminated with predictions of national collapse, referring to the youths as 'those vermin' and 'mutated locusts wreaking untold havoc on the land'. Whitsun 1964 has become famous as the peak of the Mods and Rockers riots, as large groups of teenagers committed mayhem on the rain-swept streets of southern resorts like Margate, Brighton, Clacton and Bournemouth. Extensively photographed and publicised at the time, these disturbances have entered pop folklore: proudly emblazoned on sites about Mod culture and expensively recreated in the 1979 film Quadrophenia. Yet, as ever when you're dealing with tabloid newspapers, things are not quite what they seemed. What was trumpeted as a vicious exercise in national degeneration was to some extent, pre-hyped by the press.

It was also not as all-encompassing as the headlines suggested: although an estimated 1,000 youths were involved in the Brighton disturbances, there were only 76 arrests. In Margate, there were an estimated 400 youths involved, with 64 arrests. While unpleasant and oppressive, this was hardly a teen take-over. The cycle had begun six weeks or so earlier, during a dull and unseasonably cold Easter weekend. Up to 1,000 or so young Londoners had descended on Clacton, a smallish resort on England’s eastern coast. Bored with the bad weather and limited facilities, groups had separated according to their tribe: there were scuffles and stone-throwing, and the generally threatening appearance of teenagers en masse, barely restrained by an underwhelming police presence. View image of Mods at Hastings with their scooters. (Credit: Photo by Keystone/Getty Images) On Easter Monday, the press went big with the story: 'Day of Terror by Scooter Groups' (Daily Telegraph), 'Youngsters Beat Up Town - 97 Leather Jacket Arrests' (Daily Express), and 'Wild Ones Invade Seaside - 97 Arrests' (Daily Mirror).

Citing “fighting, drinking, roaring, rampaging teenagers on scooters and motorcycles”, the Mirror referenced the notorious 1953 Marlon Brando film, The Wild One, which in mid-sixties Britain was still banned by the British Board of Film Censors, as likely to incite juvenile delinquency. After that sensational write-up, the pattern was prepared for the next public holiday, andsouthern seaside resorts became the theatre. Contrasted with the anomie of Clacton, it became split along stylistic and tribal lines: between smart, scooter-riding, of-the-minute Mods, and leather-jacketed, scruffy Rockers − the younger siblings of the early 60s Ton Up Boys. 'Grease' they were called, and, although they had long hair − longer than many Mods − they were seen as throwbacks to Marlon Brando and 1950s Teddy Boys. Generation X The relationship between the rioters and the press was examined in Generation X, an influential piece of youth sociology by Charles Hamblett and Jane Deverson − published in 1964 to capitalise on the apparent turmoil of contemporary youth.

The cover simulated a variety of lurid headlines or phrases ̶ "RIGHT OLD MESS', 'PUNCH UP', 'QUEER ̶ but the book gave room to the voices of real teens, allowing them to speak freely. It remains a valuable document. It began with a quote from “John Braden, 18, a London mechanic”: “yes, I am a Mod and I was at Margate. I'm not ashamed of it − I wasn't the only one. I joined in a few of the fights. It was a laugh, I haven't enjoyed myself so much for a long time. It was great − the beach was like a battlefield. It was like we were taking over the country. You want to hit back at all the old geezers who try to tell us what to do. We just want to show them we're not going to take it.” View image of A policeman escorts a teenager (Credit: Photo by Keystone/Getty Images) The Whitsun 1964 disturbances announced the fact that a new generation was claiming its space and its time.

As evidenced by the interviews in Generation X, the early baby-boomers were more confident, better educated, and even more restless than their 1950s counterparts: the Edwardians, later Teddy Boys, who had become notorious for their combination of strange, exaggerated clothes and tendency towards extreme violence. Generation X captured, for the first time from within, a separate youth world that took its cues from music and fashion. As one interviewee observed: “a lot of today's teenagers have ambitions to be the top dresser in his district. Another ambition is to play in a beat group that's going to have some sort of fame”. Films were still important as fantasy vehicles but the public life of 1960s teenagers was acted out in terms of Mod clothes, Bluebeat music and Soho clubs.

‘Moral panic’ The Mod/Rocker disturbances soon faded as other styles came into youth culture prominence, but they set a pattern of tribal violence that would continue on and off throughout the rest of the 1960s (Skinheads v Hippies), the 1970s (Punks v Teds), and the 1980s − when the front cover of Time's European edition for 24 October 1983 showed a scary-looking Mohawk punk with the cover strap The Tribes of Britain. Inside, the lurid copy presented a country riven by inter-youth culture battles. The events of 1964 were also a textbook example of what the sociologist Jock Young termed “a moral panic”. This idea was explored by Stanley Cohen in his ground-breaking study of the Mod/Rocker riots, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: “a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylised and stereotypical fashion by the mass media”. Moral barricades are manned, solutions are devised by 'experts', and the episode fades or is successfully 'dealt with'.

Cohen observed how “one of the most recurrent types of moral panic in Britain since the war has been associated with the emergence of various forms of youth culture”'. What to the young seemed quite natural − the announcement of their generation's arrival, a claiming of public space within a country that catered little for their needs − to adults seemed threatening and a symptom of national decay. There was violence, to be sure, but some of this was simply adult projection: a dark vision of a nightmare future symbolised by alien youth. Folk Devils and Moral Panics was published in 1973, and coincided with the pioneering work undertaken at Birmingham's Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies: during the next few years, books like Resistance Through Rituals by Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, and Dick Hebdige's Subculture: the Meaning of Style developed subcultural theory − in short, the mapping of youth tribes as both a commercial creation and a way of resistance − as a method of analysing mass youth culture. Retromania It also fed back into popular culture.

The early to mid 1970s saw all manner of nostalgic elements enter the pop mainstream, as the modernism of the ’60s was replaced with an awareness of the past: the early 1960s retro of the vastly influential George Lucas film, American Graffiti, the Pop Art references in Roxy Music's Virginia Plain, the Mod pop retro of David Bowie's 1973 covers album, Pin Ups, the harking back to the 1964 heyday of the Mods and Rockers in the Who's 1973 album, Quadrophenia. View image of Sid Vicious (Credit: Elisa Leonelli/REX) At the same time, the various incarnations of the shop run by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood at 430 Kings Road passed through historical subcultures: in Let It Rock (1972-3), the Edwardian clothes of the Teddy Boys, in Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die (1974) ‘40s zoot suits and ‘50s rocker leathers.

In Sex (1974-6) they sourced fetish clothing along with their own original designs, usually festooned in slogans and extreme imagery. In May 1976, McLaren told the magazine Street Life, “I think now kids have a hankering to be part of a movement… They want to associate with a movement that's hard and tough and in the open like the clothes we're selling here.” Early punk audiences mixed handmade designs with clothes sourced from the 1940s and 1950s − in a dizzying, living collage. Punk in turn kick-started an explosion of subcultural research, as all the strands that had been packed into the original movement unravelled into individual styles. The punks v Teds battles of 1977 − a self-conscious reprise of the Mods v Rockers disturbances − were followed by the reappearance of Skinheads, the Mod Revival of 1979, the Ska revival, and the onset of the New Romantics, who freely and gleefully plundered styles going right back to the 19th Century. Clothes became more than individual adornment: a matter of deep, tribal identification.

In the early ‘90s, just as Britain's style wars were abating − thanks to rave culture and the onset of sportswear as a youth cult staple − the phrase Generation X was given a new lease of life. Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture examined the early adulthood of another generation: coinciding with the success of Nirvana's Nevermind and the consequent obsession with Grunge, it caught the emergence of the cohort born in the mid to late 1960s, just after the baby boomer bulge. Since then, the phrase has been adapted for successive waves of young adults: Generation Y, Generation Z, Generation Rent etc − so much so that it has become almost meaningless. Most of the stories using these generational tropes follow the time-honoured media template: either positive − celebrating the young in consumerist terms as early adopters and trend-spotters − or condemnatory, usually in terms of violence orapathy. Whether it be Generation X, Y or Z, adults continue to project their hopes and fears onto adolescents. Talking about a generation marks the arrival of a fresh cohort who will respond to the world in their own way.

Whether adults like it or not, teenagers embody the future, and many of them will respond to the challenges they face in constructive and creative ways. If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter . Mods Vs Rockers! Best friends mark 1964 clash that became part of Sixties folklore and inspired iconic film Quadrophenia | Daily Mail Online Mods Vs Rockers! Best friends mark 1964 clash that became part of Sixties folklore and inspired iconic film Quadrophenia John Pedrick and Adrian Tincknell headed to Brighton for anniversary They were part of the bloody seafront battle in in Brighton in 1964 More than 1,000 youths clashed there as police fought to control them Battle between Mods and Rockers that became part of 60s folklore comments They may now be retired grandfathers, but that didn't stop these two former Mods climbing aboard their scooters and heading for Brighton. Fifty years ago today John Pedrick and Adrian Tincknell were part of the bloody seafront confrontation between the Mods and Rockers that became part of 60s folklore.

More than 1,000 youths clashed on the seafront on May 18, 1964, as police fought to control running battles that saw more than 70 arrests and deck chairs used as weapons by the warring groups of youths. Former Mods John Pedrick and Adrian Tincknell climbed aboard their scooters and headed for Brighton I'll deck you! Adrian Tincknell, 69, and John Pedrick, 67, met at the spot where the Mods and Rockers battled But with the combatants now pensioners there was only good natured banter as they shared an ice cream with bikers who had also headed for the city to mark the anniversary. Mr Tincknell, a former mechanic, is now 69 and still owns a Lambretta scooter and dresses in Mod gear. After riding into Brighton from his home nearby in Worthing, West Sussex, he said: 'Once a Mod, always a Mod. I had to be here. RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share 'On that fateful day 50 years ago I was keeping out of trouble up a lampost on the seafront watching the mayhem when my father spotted me.

'He was a Brighton policeman at the time and he ordered me to go home. Needless to say, I didn't. There was too much going on. 'I still love riding my scooter and dressing in Mod gear. We are all too old to fight now, it has all been very peaceful with lots of banter over a cup of tea with the lads on their motor bikes.' John Pedrick and Adrian Tincknell were part of the bloody seafront confrontation between the Mods and Rockers Mods and rockers fighting on the beach at Brighton in 1964 Mods at the opening of the 1979 film Quadrophenia, about the Brighton battle His best friend John Pedrick, now 67 and a retired insurance assessor living in Chichester, West Sussex, rode the same model Lambretta scooter along the promenade in Brighton where 50 years earlier he had run into the sea to escape the fighting. 'It's all very friendly today but it was pretty violent back then. I was a footballer in those days so I could run fast enough to get away, something I'd struggle to do now. 'And the only safe place was in the sea.

I can't believe it has been 50 years. I'm still a young Mod at heart and thankfully things are much more chilled out now.' Mr Tincknell (right) is a former mechanic, is now 69 and still owns a Lambretta scooter and dresses in Mod gear For the 50th anniversary in the sun the fighting had been replaced by a seafront Mini Car Rally Morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse said she was 'disgusted' with mass brawls she blamed on youngsters watching violence on television The pictures of the battles along the seafront and pavements in Brighton on that Whitsun bank holiday in 1964 became iconic symbols of the era. The courts were busy for weeks afterwards dealing with the 75 youths arrested and the skirmishes were later immortalised in the film Quadrophenia. Morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse said she was 'disgusted' with mass brawls she blamed on youngsters watching violence on television. For the 50th anniversary in the sun the fighting had been replaced by a seafront Mini Car Rally and a performance by a group of Morris dancers.

THE BATTLE OF BRIGHTON: MODS VS ROCKERS IN 1964 Fifty years ago, in the spring of 1964, simmering rivalry between the groups reached a flashpoint as they clashed repeatedly on seaside piers and promenades across the country. But the worst of the violence was seen in Brighton, as families were trapped in a shocking showdown which sparked moral panic about the state of British youth. Tensions had been rising for some time. The Rockers were usually in their 20s or 30s; Elvis-loving bikers rooted in 1950s Teddy Boy culture. The teenage Mods’ culture, which flourished in the early 60s, was based on continental clothes, Italian Vespa and Lambretta scooters and the music of soul and jazz musicians. They first clashed that spring on the March bank holiday in Clacton. At the Essex resort 97 people were arrested and the battle lines were drawn. After that, trouble flared from Bournemouth to Margate, up to the bank holiday of August 1964.

But Brighton’s Whitsun clash was the most notorious, thanks to sensational headlines and its immortalisation in Mod flick Quadrophenia. Battles ran well into the night but although there were weapons – knives, chains and makeshift knuckle dusters – most scuffles involved fists and boots. Film locations for Quadrophenia (1979) Eat at: Meat People, 4-6 Essex Road , Islington, N1 (tel: 020.7359.5361) (tube: Angel, Northern Line) Brighton: rail from London Victoria De Vere Grand, King's Road , Brighton (tel: 01273.224300) Trivia Brighton on screen has traditionally had a seedy reputation. In the 1947 screen version of Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock, Richard Attenborough is surprisingly menacing as a baby-faced teenage hoodlum in a world of sleazy smalltime gangsters. The town’s shabby gentility was exploited by opening up Joe Orton’s housebound black farce Loot.

Neil Jordan ’s Mona Lisa ends in Brighton, with a confrontation on the Palace Pier, while Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore enjoy a furtive weekend in the same director’s adaptation of another Graham Greene novel, The End of the Affair. And, of course, where else would the Carry On... team enjoy their constant pursuit of nookey in Carry On Girls and Carry On at Your Convenience  even if it masquerades as Fircombe-on-Sea. Quadrophenia location: Chasing the Greaser: Shepherds Bush Market, Goldhawk Road, London W12 The Who’s album is used as a framework for teen angst and a recreation of the early Sixties weekend battles between supersharp Mods and leatherclad Rockers. The Who hailed originally from Shepherd’s Bush in west London , and this is where most of the London scenes are set. Fiercely Mod Jimmy ( Phil Daniels ) rides his scooter along Goldhawk Road to meet Steph ( Leslie Ash ) at Ashken’s supermarket, which once stood between Bamborough Gardens and Woodger Road.

Quadrophenia location: the pie’n’mash shop: Cooke’s, 48 Goldhawk Road, London W12 On the other side of the road, another Quadrophenia location, though, is still thriving. Forget fish and chips, the real old London tradition, now hard to find, is pie and mash – beef pie, mashed potato and parsley liquor. If you’re brave, and you can find them, you could try eels, too. The pie and mash shop where Jimmy and greaser pal Kevin ( Ray Winstone ) eat after meeting up in the bath-house is Cooke’s, 48 Goldhawk Road , alongside the entrance to Shepherd’s Bush Market. There’s been a pie and mash establishment here since 1891, and it’s been Cooke’s since 1934. Now – unbelievably – there are plans to redevelop the block. Visit Cooke’s website and help save this classic institution now. This narrow, bustling alley of Shepherd’s Bush Market, running alongside the railway between Goldhawk Road Station and Shepherd’s Bush Station, is the benighted passage along which Kevin is chased from Goldhawk Road tube station and beaten up by Mods.

Quadrophenia location: Jimmy’s house: Wells House Road, Willesden, London NW10 Jimmy’s home was north of Shepherd’s Bush, at 75 Wells House Road, backing onto the railway line between Willesden Junction and Acton Central, near Old Oak Common. Quadrophenia location: the party house on ‘Kitchener Road’: Clarendon Gardens, Wembley Northwest of London , in Wembley, 54 Clarendon Gardens at Castleton Avenue is the house on ‘Kitchener Road’ where Jimmy and the Mods crash the party The Rockers attack Spider after his scooter breaks down outside the Bramley Arms, Notting Hill, a pub seen in movies such as classic Ealing comedy The Lavender Hill Mob, with Alec Guinness , the Harold Pinter reverse-timescale drama Betrayal, John Boorman ’s offbeat Leo the Last and Alex Cox ’s Sid And Nancy. Opposite the Bramley is the scrapyard where Pete works. During the Seventies, much of the area was squatted and, in a gesture inspired by Ealing’s Passport to Pimlico , seceded from the UK. When threatened with eviction, residents appealed to the UN.

The Quadrophenia film crew needed to get ‘passports’ for the ‘Kingdom of Frestonia’ in order to film there. Quadrophenia location: The Mods’ London hangout: Meat People, Essex Road, Islington, London N1 The capital hangout of the Mods is an art deco gem a few minutes north of Angel tube station in Islington, north London . Dating from the 1920s, the cafe (which also appeared in 1997’s Fifties-set music biz drama Mojo) was originally Alfredo’s. Sadly it closed down several years ago, only to reopen for several years as the S&M Cafe (calm down, that’s ‘sausage and mash’). Fortunately, the distinctive premises, panelled with very Twenties-style vitrolite (opaque white glass), is Grade II listed which means that most of the original features have been retained.

It lives on now as Meat People, 4-6 Essex Road, N1 – which sounds disturbingly more Soylent Green than Quadrophenia, though the name refers to the restaurant’s speciality cuts of meat, sourced from around the world (which have apparently included kangaroo, springbok and even zebra). Another north London location has not been so lucky. North of Highgate, on North Hill, N6, stands the Wellington Service Station. This unremarkable little garage stands on the site of the old Wellington pub, which was the boozer in which Jimmy and his Mod pals buy dud pills from the hard men. Back to West London . It’s while using the, now closed, public baths of Porchester Hall, Porchester Centre, Queensway, that old pals Jimmy and Kevin meet up, only to realise that they’ve fallen on opposite sides of the Mod-Rocker divide when they come to get dressed. The complex also contains a Turkish bath which is still functioning. Incidentally, the baths were originally intended to be the setting for the vicious knife fight in David Cronenberg ’s Eastern Promises – though practical problems meant that the scene was eventually shot on a studio set.

At weekends, the rival tribes fled south from London to the Coast Mods on their scooters, Rockers on motorbikes. In the faded seaside town of Brighton, the rival gangs congregate by the Palace Pier, in front of the now-closed Heart and Hand – then one of Brighton’s most famous gay bars. The marquee of the cinema next door is advertising Heaven Can Wait – the Warren Beatty movie released in (whoops) 1978. Quadrophenia location: The riot spills into town: East Street, Brighton East along the seafront, the Mods meet for breakfast at the Waterfront Cafe at the Peter Pan Play Area, Madeira Drive. Opposite the pier entrance you can see the exterior of the ballroom in which the Mods enjoy a raucous evening, is now the Brighton Sealife Centre. So if you're going to Brighton to check out the interior, you're in for a disappointment. The dance hall, where Jimmy upstages Ace ( Sting ) by leaping from the balcony, is in Southgate, north London . It used to be the Royalty Ballroom, bit is now The LA Fitness, Winchmore Hill Road, at the end of Dennis Parade opposite Southgate tube station.

Quadrophenia location: The dance hall exterior: Sea Life Centre, Brighton Back in Brighton, the riot spreads from the seafront into the town. Just across Old Steine is East Street, where the rioters get hemmed in by the law and Jimmy finally manages a quickie with Steph in the narrow alley by number 11, leading to Little East Street. Quadrophenia location: Jimmy and Steph enjoy a quickie: alley by 11 East Street, Brighton Back in London , in the streets north of Uxbridge Road, Shepherd’s Bush, is the Wormholt Estate where, on Gravesend Road at Sawley Road, Jimmy’s scooter gets “killed” in a collision with a post office van. With his beloved scooter is trashed, Jimmy catches the train to Brighton from Paddington Station – though no trains run to the south coast from here (Brighton trains leave from Victoria). The hotel, where Jimmy is ultimately disillusioned by the sight of Ace working as a bellboy is, of course, the five-star De Vere Grand , King’s Road, dominating the town’s seafront.

Quadrophenia location: ‘Bellboy’: The De Vere Grand, Brighton The spectacular white cliffs, from which Jimmy ultimately takes a dive on Ace’s jazzed-up scooter, are almost twenty miles east of Brighton, at Beachy Head, southwest of Eastbourne. Battle on the beaches: 50th anniversary of violent clashes between Mods and Rockers | Life | Life & Style | Daily Express LIFE Battle on the beaches: 50th anniversary of violent clashes between Mods and Rockers FIFTY years ago this weekend violent clashes broke out between gangs of Mods and Rockers at a number of seaside resorts, sparking a moral panic about British youth. 02:07, Sat, May 17, 2014 Natural sworn enemies - but much of the rivalry between the Mods and Rockers was 'just banter'[GETTY] IT WAS the dark side of the Swinging Sixties when two rival cultures clashed and Britain's seaside resorts became battlegrounds. On one side were the Mods in their sharp suits, button-down shirts and Parkas. They listened to soul music, rode Vespa or Lambretta scooters and kept their hair trimmed. On the other were the Rockers in black leather and denim.

They bought the records of Elvis and Gene Vincent, let their locks to grow wild and travelled on motorbikes. The mix combusted 50 years ago on the Bank Holiday weekend of May 18 and 19 when thousands of Mods and Rockers flocked to Brighton, Margate, Clacton, Southend and Hastings. Holidaymakers fled in terror as fights erupted on promenades, while deckchairs were hurled and set on fire. Police became embroiled in the violence, courts worked overtime and politicians agonised about the state of the nation's youth. It was the era when the The Beatles and Carnaby Street emerged to challenge the staid traditional Britain of bowler hats and umbrellas. But behind the vibrancy there was simmering tension. Apart from being young and rebellious, Mods and Rockers had nothing in common. The Mods regarded their rivals as smelly and greasy. The Rockers sneered at the under-powered "prams" ridden by the Mods and their bright clothes. You belonged to one tribe or the other and a turf war resulted over the seaside resorts which both groups believed was their territory.

There had already been trouble that Easter, including nearly 100 arrests at Clacton in Essex. It's been claimed that the level of violence a few weeks later has been exaggerated and some of the ugly scenes were staged but there were hundreds of arrests. The trouble in Brighton was depicted in the 1979 film Quadrophenia, featuring the music of The Who. At one stage about 200 Mods ran towards us and we drew our truncheons. They just stopped and ran away. David Rowland Alfredo Marcantonio, who was a 17-year-old Mod in 1964 and witnessed the battles in the East Sussex resort, says: "After the war everything had been very grey. My sister got me into the music but I was most attracted to Mod culture by the cool clothing. No one else dressed like that and so we stood out. I got beaten up a couple of times and chased. Mods were seen as a soft target and bullied." The TV pop music programme Ready Steady Go! helped spread awareness of Mod fashions and the movement grew.

Mods chose scooters, which they adorned with mirrors and mascots, because they had fewer moving parts and were less likely to stain expensive clothes with oil. Female Mods dressed androgynously with short haircuts and little make-up. Alfredo Marcantonio like and styled himself with the Mod fashion [PH] Their musical tastes were soul, R&B and jazz and they would gather at all night clubs such as The Scene and The Marquee in London to dance and show off their clothes. Their sophisticated style, following French and Italian fashion trends, was a deliberate statement against the leather-clad look of the Rockers. Alfredo, now a leading advertising executive, bought a Vespa scooter on hire purchase and went to the south coast with other Mods from London. "The seaside towns were the domain of the rocker, their patch," he adds. "Every rocker dreamed of working on the dodgems, with the sound of Del Shannon echoing past the helterskelter. So a lot of us turning up on scooters, it was asking for trouble. "I do remember getting cuffed by a copper at Easter but I was on the fringes of the violence and never hit anyone.

There was no way I was going to risk losing a button from my expensive shirt." The clashes in 1964 were the first time there were enough Mods to fight back against the Rockers. In Brighton, where the worst of the violence happened on the Sunday, shop windows were smashed and scuffles went on into the night. Teenagers staged a mass sit-down on the promenade when police using horses and dogs tried to move them on. It was mainly fist fighting but knives, chains and knuckle-dusters were used, while it was claimed that Mods sometimes sewed fish hooks or razor blades into their lapels to shred the fingers of assailants. The fights on the beaches of 1964 would be recreated in cult film 'Quadrophenia' [GETTY] Because trouble had been expected plenty of photographers were on hand and an iconic image shows deckchairs used as weapons to be smashed over heads. Mail trolleys were used as makeshift prison cells and courts were kept busy for weeks.

Brighton's police cells where the Mods and Rockers were held are now a museum and the old graffiti is still there, including the scrawl: "Dave the Rocker was here 1964." Clashes along the coast prompted headlines about the "Second Battle of Hastings". Margate, Kent, where there were running battles between police and 400 youths, saw 51 arrests. Youths in leather jackets marched along the promenade shouting: "Up the Rockers." Jailing four youths Dr George Simpson, chairman of Margate magistrates, said: "It is not likely that the air of this town has ever been polluted by the hordes of hooligans, male and female, such as we have seen this weekend. "These long-haired, mentally unstable, petty little hoodlums, these sawdust Caesars who can only find courage like rats hunting in packs, came to Margate with the avowed intent of interfering with the life and properties of its inhabitants." The Rockers' heroes were actors Marlon Brando and James Dean and they tended to dress identically, perhaps adding a scarf for a touch of flair.

Rocker females wore much the same with some opting for tight black Capri pants, high-heels and had beehive hairdos. MOTORBIKES became more affordable in the 1960s and the rise of the transport caf© provided a natural meeting point for Rockers. While Mods were said to pop pills Rockers preferred beer and cigarettes. Pete Allum, 65, from Peacehaven, East Sussex, became a Rocker because he loved motorbikes. "My first bike was a Triumph Tiger Cub which cost me about £20," he says. "I had a PVC jacket because I couldn't afford leather. I was into the Rolling Stones, Gene Vincent and Bill Haley. A lot of the rivalry between the Mods and Rockers was just banter. They used to call me a dirty greaser and I'd take the mickey out of their scooters by calling them hair driers. They didn't like us and we didn't like them. "When I got a bigger bike we'd hang out at a transport café on the A23 near Brighton and drive up and down, trying to do a ton [100mph]. "There were a few clashes.

I was in Brighton in 1964. I was with a group of about 10 Rockers and we were confronted by some Mods and chased along the sea front." David Rowland, who was a 29-year-old police constable at the time of the May clashes in Brighton, adds: "We knew they were coming that weekend to fight. Reinforcements were brought in from all over the South. It was two different cultures that clashed. Mods heavily outnumbered Rockers so they were getting quite badly beaten. I was on the the seafront when the deckchairs started flying. "Our orders were to keep them on the beach so they didn't run amok in the town centre. It did get quite hairy. They had an unlimited supply of beach stones to throw at us and about 30 officers were injured. "At one stage about 200 Mods ran towards us and we drew our truncheons. They just stopped and ran away. We weren't supposed to clip them round the ears but the vast majority of the troublemakers got one.

At one stage we had 76 Mods crammed into six cells." The violence continued throughout 1964, flaring again in August and into 1965. The disorder was discussed in Parliament. Various solutions were offered, including bringing back conscription, hard labour and even reviving the stocks. In the end the problem simply went away. Mods and Rockers continued the custom of gathering at seaside resorts but the vicious rivalry ran out of steam. It's said reunions are staged by old foes, now pensioners, who reminisce over a cuppa. Peace was restored to the coasts, bank holidays once again became jolly affairs and many Mods went off to become hippies. Related articles Watch Quadrophenia, the British Crime film by Franc Roddam | Fandor Directed by Franc Roddam 4.1 Jimmy, a member of a well-dressed, drugged-up teenaged gang called the Mods, is forever duking it out with the cycle-punk Rockers. The rivalry between the two gangs comes to a head during three tempestuous days in the seaside town of Brighton. Here Jimmy makes love to lovely local Steph and forges a strong friendship with unofficial Mod leader Ace Face.

A series of disappointments and setbacks in his own London neighborhood convinces Jimmy to return to Brighton to pick up the pieces. [Inspired by the album-of-the-same-title by the Who.] Play in App Britmovie | Home of British Films Home of British Films Quadrophenia – 1979 | 120 mins | Drama, Musical | Colour Plot Synopsis Phil Daniels is the pent-up, parka wearing, pill-popping Jimmy whose need for tribal acceptance leaves his relationships in tatters. Based on the Who album, the gritty youth-centric realism blends laughs with symbolism, psychology and some driving rock music. In 1964 London, Jimmy Cooper (Phil Daniels), is a member of a mod gang, well-dressed youths who ride Lambretta scooters. The mods are always fighting with Rockers, who wear black leather, ride motorcycles. Disillusioned by his parents and a dead end job in an advertising firm, Jimmy only finds an outlet for his teenage angst with his mod pals Dave (Mark Wingett), Chalky (Philip Davis) and Spider (Gary Shail).

A three-day bank holiday is the excuse for the rivalry between the two gangs to come to a head, as they both descend upon the seaside town of Brighton. When the armies of mods and rockers meet the next morning in Brighton, a riot breaks out first in a cafï¿½, then bloodily on the beachfront, during the battle Jimmy and Steph (Leslie Ash) duck into an alley and start having sex against a brick wall. Later, Jimmy is arrested along with Ace (Sting), the mod gang leader who captures Jimmyï¿½s imagination. Jimmy returns to London, only to discover his mother has found his drugs and throws him out of the house. He walks out of his job after being disciplined for arriving late for work, and after discovering Steph has taken up with his best friend decides to return to Brighton. Outside a hotel he sees Aceï¿½ s scooter and for a moment his spirits are lifted, until he sees his hero is nothing more than a hotel bellboy. Jimmy, his last illusion shattered, steals Aceï¿½s scooter and rides it out to the cliffs, after riding along the edge for a while he drives straight for the brink at top speed.

At the last second he jumps off, and the scooter crashes on the rocks below. Production Team Mods and rockers - Mods vs Rockers - the mods and the rockers Menu Mods and Rockers Mods and Rockers, two rival British youth gangs, on Easter weekend 1964, a long Bank Holiday, met up in various resort locations in England, and violence broke out. The riots on Brighton beach and elsewhere attracted the attention of the press in the United Kingdom and abroad. There seems to be little evidence that there was widespread documented physical animosity between the two groups before the riots that erupted in 1964. However, the Mods and the Rockers represented two very different approaches taken by disenfranchised British youth. The Rockers were associated with motorcycles, and in particular with the larger, heavy and powerful Triumph motorcycles of the late 1950s. They favored black leather, much like American motorcycle gang members of the era. Their musical tastes ran to white American rock and rollers such as Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent, and Eddie Cochran. By contrast, the Mods made a conscious attempt to appear new (hence, “Mod,” or modern) by favoring Italian motor scooters and wearing suits.

Musically, Mods favored modern jazz, Jamaican music, and African American R&B. In the early 1960s, the lines between Mods and Rockers were clearly drawn: the Mods thought of themselves as more sophisticated, more stylish, and more in touch with the times than the Rockers were. The Rockers, however, viewed the Mods as effeminate snobs. Mods and Rockers roots Any discussion of Mods and Rockers must also include discussion of the Teddy Boys and Teddy Girls. This segment of the British youth subculture developed after World War II — it predates the Mods and Rockers. Curiously, the Teddy Boys (and Girls) are seen as the spiritual ancestors of both Mods and Rockers. The curious and somewhat confusing mix of various gang-like youth subcultures in the late 1950s in Britain plays a role in the youth-exploitation film Beat Girl.

In this 1960 movie — which starred Christopher Lee, Oliver Reed, Gillian Hills, Adam Faith, and Noëlle Adam — one can see elements of the developing Mod culture (the jazz-loving, coffee-bar teen group represented by Faith’s, Hills’s, and Reed’s characters) and a touch of the developing Rocker culture (in the form of a large, American-style car that is used in one sequence from the film, and hair styles worn by some of the minor young male characters). Near the end of the film, a group of Teddy Boys destroy Faith’s sports car. It is interesting to note that the nascent Mods and Rockers of the film seem not to be in conflict with each other, or at least not nearly as much as the “Teds” (as Faith’s character, Dave, calls them) are in conflict with these newer groups.

Mods and Rockers as Working class youth subculture While not detailed the Mods and Rockers per se — they are being used primarily as a metaphor for the changing aesthetics in British youth culture from the 1950s to the early 1960s — it is important to note that sociologists have determined that despite their outward differences (hair, dress, mode of transportation, and so on) the groups share several crucial links. For one thing, members of the youth gangs of the 1950s and early 1960s tended to be working class. And, although some members of the gangs described themselves as middle class, very rarely were Britain’s upper social and economic classes represented in the Mods or Rockers. Likewise, we shall see that skiffle and rock musicians that sprang up within British youth culture in the 1950s and early 1960s also tended to come from the working class.

Mods vs Rockers at the beach in Brighton 1964 It was the ultimate clashes: the mods vs the rockers, two youth movements in the 60’s that represented a big divide in society, broke into pandemonium at the beach by Palace Pier in Brighton on May 18, 1964. Gangs from each group threw deck chairs, threatened pedestrians in the resort town with knives, created bonfires, and angrily lashed out at one another on the beach. When the police arrived, the teenagers tossed stones at them and staged a massice sit-in on the shore – over 600 of them had to be controlled and approximately 50 were arrested. This now-infamous brawl in Brighton and other seaside resorts over each group’s claim to fame was even documented in the film Quadrophenia, which came out in 1979.

Mods vs Rockers videos Quadrophenia, Theatre Royal, Brighton | The Independent Quadrophenia, Theatre Royal, Brighton Sunday 6 September 2009 23:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Culture The battle of Brighton" cried the Argus newspaper in 1964 after the mods and rockers descended on the seaside town for a violent face-off. One group, in their sharp suits and parkas, rode scooters and listened to Jamaican ska and British beat music; the other favoured leather, motorbikes, greasy hair and rock'n'roll. These seaside skirmishes were seemingly forgotten until 1973 when The Who's Pete Townshend, pop's sharpest chronicler of adolescence, wrote Quadrophenia. It was a rock opera hailed by Townshend himself as his masterpiece and which in 1979 would make it to the big screen. Franc Roddam's iconic film had the greater impact, galvanising a mod revival at the tail end of punk. Thirty years on, fans still scrawl on the walls of "Quadrophenia Alley", the dingy street where Phil Daniels did the nasty with Leslie Ash.

If this stage version, directed by Tom Critchley and overseen by Townshend himself, shows anything, it's that the themes are still bitingly relevant. Mod was born from youthful disenchantment while buying wholesale into post-war consumerism. A scattering of parkas in the audience points to the nostalgia still felt for the film that articulated the passions of a generation. But while the clothes and the music are steeped in Sixties Britain, its reflections on tribalism, individuality, rebellion, violence and drugs are as potent now as they ever were. The title refers to the psychological problems of Jimmy, the protagonist, whose personality has splintered off in four directions. Jimmy's mental health is skated over in the film version, though here he is played by four actors. Thus, we have Jimmy the Romantic, Jimmy the Tough Guy, Jimmy the Lunatic and Jimmy the Hypocrite. Sketches of a dysfunctional home life reveal dad's own personality disorder and a mother who looks the other way as she tries to hold the family together. Jimmy's little brother sits on the floor playing with boats, oblivious to his own terrible fate.

In between these sad snapshots we are introduced to the mod scene, notably its rituals (scooters, suits, speed) and its characters (among them The Girl, the object of Jimmy's desire, and Ace the Face, a peacock with a shameful secret). Townshend's vision certainly puts paid to the cliché of Swinging London, presenting a depressed capital city in which the gulf between teens and their parents seems unbridgeable and the hedonism on display appears more desperate than fun. After the first act we travel to Brighton where the violence escalates along with Jimmy's internal breakdown. Played out on a slowly spinning stage bathed in dry ice, it captures the essence of what was once a dingy seaside town. If the characters are thinly drawn, it's a result of there being no dialogue – that and the show's druggy chaos. Jimmy's four-way personality can make it hard to detect the charisma that made him a leading light of the mod army. Those who haven't seen the film or studied the album might also struggle with the finer points of the story.

Ultimately, it's up to the songs to tell the tale and render the characters three-dimensional, and in the places where they don't quite succeed, they easily carry you along through sheer force of passion. You certainly can't argue with classics such as "The Real Me", "Bell Boy" and "Love Reign O'er Me", the latter sung with stinging intensity by The Girl and later by Jimmy. Raw and introspective, Quadrophenia offers up some of the most heartfelt songwriting of Townshend's career. "My Generation" may not be on the original album, but you can hardly blame Critchley for shoehorning it in. Like the show itself, it's a song that speaks to anyone who has suffered from the affliction that is being young. Touring to 3 Oct ( More about:

Question: The 1979 film 'Quadrophenia' featured a battle between mods and rockers in which British seaside town?
Answer: BRIGHTON